Deals Ep.24 - Cheddies
A chat with Team Cheddies: Anish Seth (CEO), Tomas Pergola (co/f), & Francisco Pergola (co/f)
Catch the interview on Youtube or Spotify. Subscribe to DEALS here.
What Stands Out
Crispy cheese crackers made with organic cheddar.
Cheddies is shaking up the $8b (US) cheese cracker aisle with real cheese, minimal processing, and a BFY ingredient profile that delivers on flavor.
Real, aged cheddar > processed cheese powders.
“It started in our kitchen. We’d grind cheddar right into the dough by hand, batch by batch. It’s a hard product to make, but the quality gives us an edge. - Tomas
A Legacy Category
Cheese crackers is an enormous and outdated product category.
The vast majority of these crackers on US shelves today are made with ultra-processed cheese powders, not real cheese.
Despite that, the market is lucrative.
Cheez-It and Goldfish lead the way, each driving over +$1b in annual revenue. Annie’s comes third in the $4-500m range.
The sub-set of premium snack crackers is growing well (+16% YoY per SPINS) with strong M&A potential as shown by the $795m Simple Mills acquisition in February.
“There’s a void between Annie’s and Cheez-It. We built Cheddies to fill it - with real cheese, real ingredients, and a responsible brand.” - Anish.
Cheddies Spicy Chili Lime Cheese Crackers
The Cheddies Approach
Cheddies bakes cheese directly into the crackers rather than dusting them post-bake, resulting in 4x more cheese, richer taste, and higher protein.
No artificial colors, preservatives, or dyes.
The light and airy crackers come in four cheddar-forward varieties:
🧀 Classic
🧀 🧀 Double
🔥 Spicy
🌶 Chili Lime
Supply chain transparency is a core value of the brand which works directly with regenerative farms to source the highest quality dairy possible.
Better for the product. Better for the planet.
“We’re not here to slap ‘natural’ on a box and call it innovation. This is a fundamentally different approach to how cheese crackers are made.” — Tomas.
Cheddies Spicy Cheddar Cheese Crackers
Building a Cheddar Tomorrow
The brand is rapidly gaining ground…
Strong velocities at Whole Foods and Sprouts have made Cheddies one of the fastest-growing cracker brands in the Natural channel.
Club pilots kick-off this summer with rotations scheduled at Costco (Pacific NW) and BJ’s (Mid-Atlantic) in June and July.
This Fall, Cheddies launches an exclusive new pizza flavor in collaboration with Steve Aoki, available only at Whole Foods.
7-Eleven is onboard as a retail partner and strategic investor (via 7-Ventures).
More doors. More placements. More cheese.
“We built Cheddies to be the brand families grow up with. The one kids shout for, and parents actually feel good about buying. If we stay true to real ingredients and real values, there’s no ceiling to what we can build” - Francisco
